Dispute Your Tax Credit Overpayment and Don't Give In

You're campaigning if you dispute your Tax Credit overpayment and don't give in! This website tells you exactly how to do it, you just have to have the determination and courage to see it through to the end. Remember, HMRC’s own, biased, dispute process is far from the whole story! There's still the Adjudicator, Parliamentary Ombudsman and legal action as dispute 'lives', even after HMRC turn us down.

The fewer people who are forced into repaying unjustly, and the more people who dispute, the harder it becomes for HMRC and the Government to maintain that the system is just and that we are all happy with it. As more and more complaints against HMRC are upheld, it will be clearer and clearer, to those who are choosing not to notice it now, that the system is failing us and will have to be changed.

When writing or talking to your MP about your own case, this is often the ideal time to highlight the injustices in the whole system and to mention Tax Credit Casualties by name. There's some evidence that people whose MPs are prepared to write, and especially write often, to HMRC about a constituent's case get things cleared up more quickly. HMRC seem adverse to extra work and a bad press.

Please make sure that you're not just disputing, though. COMPLAIN. The vast majority of us have not been treated properly even within the current unjust rules, and they need to know that we aren't just asking them to get off our backs, we are holding them accountable for their bad practice. So, complain to HMRC. Complain to your MP. Complain to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Don't forget to complain to the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, too. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer he devised the Tax Credit system, despite knowing about the overpayment problems that Australia had with their, similar, system. He still praises the Tax Credit system at every opportunity, and regularly argues that it is generally working well.

There are an awful lot of us suffering from the inadequacies of his system, and if his lack of action is due to an empty mailbag, we can easily put this right. He evidently needs to be told that there are not eight million blissfully happy claimants out there. Address your letters to:

Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP,
The Prime Minister,
10 Downing Street,
London,
SW1A 2AA

You used to be able to send e-mails to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street, but they seem to have stopped the e-mail facility on 12 August 2009, using the lame excuse that it didn't meet the same high standards as the rest of the Number 10 website. No prizes for guessing the real reason!